NEW TRENDS IN SEARCH TECHNOLOGIES

Introduction

• One of the key lessons of our experience of digital publishing to date is the message that content is not the only ?king? in this brave new world. Access and context, i.e. helping users mine the content and enabling them to find it in the first place, are critical ingredients to success.
• Digital content is only as good as the tools that enable access to it; in this environment, search technologies become critically important.

Applications of smart search

• The end-user market for information services has increasingly high expectations as to how databases of content should perform, but is unskilled in terms of effective search disciplines.
• A number of benchmark developments are opening up new possibilities for digital content search. These include pre-emptive search tools, automatic indexing of text, images and video and image segmentation.
• New text search tools have sought to gradually upgrade and improve on earlier technologies. Examples include Autonomy?s pre-emptive search tool which has been adopted by legal publisher Butterworths-Tolley. However, it is arguably in the evolving area of image and video that smarter solutions are currently having the most impact.
• The key breakthrough in terms of still image search and retrieval has been the development of technology which can automatically recognise, segment and catalogue image resources according to their content (thus avoiding the need to manually tag every item).
• French online auctions player iBazar has applied LookThatUp?s image recognition and segmentation technology to enable its users to interrogate the database using a ?find similar? image query function. Similar image search technology is being developed at AT&T Labs for applications in picture libraries. New content filtering and brand (IP) tracking solutions are also enabled by these technologies.
• Video search is primarily being applied by media companies looking to enable better and more efficient re-use of internal video assets. ABC News and the Discovery Channel are both exploiting Convera?s Screening Room technology to simplify and speed up the process of integrating archived footage and assets into new programming.

Business benefits

• Content players are looking to smarter search techniques to achieve both internal efficiencies and a better end-user experience.
• Primary benefits to end-users include: saving time, improved productivity and a more compelling and enjoyable content experience.
• Internal drivers of smart search adoption include easier access to media archives for re-use in current output and as a reference point for new product development.

Future trends

• Improving search capabilities is an issue which has resonance across all types of content - data, images, video and audio - and all types of content businesses.
• Hot trends to watch include the transition of smart search to mobile environments, improvements in face recognition and image segmentation technologies. Essentially the drive towards enabling effective search of truly multimedia content services will underpin these developments.
• Parallel developments in data capture and storage such as the push towards the ?semantic web? will also have an impact on search performance.
• Content providers will increasingly influence the ?searchability? of content by demanding that authors insert metadata terms, or by adding metadata themselves at the editing stage.
• The fact remains, however, that content written for people to understand will never be easily searchable by machines. This ongoing challenge makes developments in search software at the user end all the more vital.